Monday, April 16, 2007

John F. Suggs, Third Estate Sunday Review

It's Monday and I've got some stuff to note and I'm late. We went to catch Howard Zinn tonight so I'm blogging late. Check out "In Rare Joint Interview, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on Iraq, Vietnam, Activism and History" if you missed it.

So let's jump in. Betty hates the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She thinks Cynthia Tucker is the biggest fake in the world. She doesn't and won't buy Ben & Jerry's ice cream because they feature Tucker on their Working for Change website. Cynthia Tucker is what Folding Star would call a DINO. She's always there to slam. She's a sham. So Betty found something and asked me if I could highlight it here? As a rule, no site in this community mentions Tucker's name. This is Betty's stomping ground. We respect our members. So if any member's casually reading and thinking, "Mike's got something on Cynthia Tucker up at his site," it's a criticism of her and Betty asked me to link to it. This is from John F. Suggs' "Racism at Pulitzer Winner Cynthia Tucker's Home Port: Hate and Hypocrisy in the Cox Empire:"

Let's face it: Right-wing talk radio acquired the moniker "hate radio" for a reason. It's full of racism, religious bigotry, paranoia, homophobia and sexism.
One would think the media would be near-unanimous in condemning the use of public--repeat: public--airwaves to broadcast speech more appropriate to a meeting of a Klan Klavern. Over at the Cox-owned Atlanta Journal-Constitution, they did express outrage at recent comments by Don Imus. But Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial writers only went ballistic when hate speech was broadcast on stations that compete with Cox's own radio and TV outlets. The newspaper had no such criticism aimed at often more virulent racism on Cox stations.
Indeed, part of Imus' outburst was highlighted by a racist remark about the hairdos of a women's basketball team, and his reference to the athletes as "hos."
Yet a year ago, Cox's lead talk-radio host, Neal Boortz, referred to a black congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney: "She looks like a ghetto slut. It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory." Hairdo and derogatory sexual references are hardly distinguishable from the remarks that got Imus fired.

If you're not aware of it, that crappy paper went after Cynthia McKinney with a passion. That's really something, isn't it? Piece of trash paper with a piece of trash Cynthia Tucker. By the way, none of us eat Ben & Jerry's anymore. Most of because of Tucker. C.I. because of a really bad flavor. (I'm not joking on that. They were out of cherry garcia, this was like a year or maybe two ago, and C.I. was on the road, dead tired, and grabbed a flavor that was hideous and now just looking at Ben & Jerry's is enough to make the stomach churn, any flavor. We heard about that because Jess had recommended the flavor! :D Jess said he hadn't so much as recommended it as asked what it tasted like? So since C.I. was off Ben & Jerry's for good -- it left a bad, bad taste, Jess pointed out that they publish Tucker who isn't left and seemed to existt the last five years only to attack Cynthia McKinney, and we all said, "Fine, we won't buy it anymore." And we don't. Biggest ice cream eaters are Dona, C.I., Jim, Jess, Cedric and me. We take our business elsewhere.) Betty's latest chapter if "Flop House," so be sure to check that out.

Callie e-mailed and she's a Texas community member. She went to listen to Law and Disorder on WBAI this morning, turned on as Democracy Now! was going off and wondered where the show was? OUT FM was on instead. I guess they switched the time. I listen on a CD that a friend of C.I.'s e-mails me. She was listening at the right time though. She heard Democracy Now! wrap up and the announcer came on and then OUT FM. If anyone knows when it is airing, e-mail and I'll note it here and also pass it on to Callie in an e-mail. I also e-mailed her that if there was an episode I'd talked about that she wanted to hear so she could see what the show was like, I'd e-mail the disc to her. (This was going to be her first time listening.) I hope people do check out Law and Disorder because it's one of the best radio programs. They will let other stations carry it as well. So if you're in an area that doesn't carry it and you've got a community radio station, ask them to carry it.

Okay, let's talk about The Third Estate Sunday Review and before I get to the content, Ty asked me to please note something ("PLEASE!") when he called earlier. What? They'll be a feature next week about the links. So what I'll note today is that Ty mentioned some of the e-mails to C.I. and noted that the links never got added. Today was the first day in weeks that C.I. wasn't on the road (weekday) and Ty was not asking C.I. to do the links. C.I. spent two hours adding links. They're not all up. But Ty wants it noted that C.I. did that "because no one else had time and C.I. didn't have time, should have just been enjoying a morning, having a lazy morning" and some are up. There will be a feature about what is up and what isn't and why this coming Sunday. There will be no CODEPINK button. That's not them spitting on CODEPINK. That's because, after spending 2 hours doing links, C.I. spent another hour trying to put the button up. It won't go up. They lost all their links when they switched their template two weeks ago. They put some up that first Sunday and hoped to do more during the week. There wasn't time. C.I.'s put a lot up and Ty says don't switch templates in Blogger/Blogspot Beta if you're trying to do widgets and stuff unless you want to lose all your links. And in the new template they had to switch to in order to do widgets, doing a button won't work. C.I. got a button up twice but it wasn't a button. It was just the image. You try to click on it but you can't because it won't let you. So there's no button and that's not because they've decided, "Eeeewww CODEPINK," but because, if there's a way to do buttons, they can't figure it out.

So that's coming up this Sunday, here's what posted yesterday.

Truest statement of the week -- Margaret Kimberley was the pick. Strong commentary so check it out.

A Note to Our Readers -- That's a long note to the readers! I need to fess up, I was talking sports with Jim, Jess, Betty, Wally and Cedric forever. And Ty too. Elaine and Rebecca ended up losing interest and watching TV. I don't know what Kat was doing. (Elaine, Rebecca and I were all at my house.) By the way, the writing credits appear in the note each week, here they are: "The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim, Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills), Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, and Wally of The Daily Jot."

Editorial: The disgusting silence on war resisters... -- print version has an editorial on Wolfy and the World Bank. It's probably okay but nobody was loving it. We love this one. It's hard hitting.

TV: Wasted away in second banana-ville -- Ava and C.I. wrote this. They wrote in 15 minutes. Like Jim says, before the new editorial was done, this was the last thing written and they were dead tired. So we were all surprised that it turned out to be so great. It really is. The new editorial resulted from three hours of Rebecca and C.I. trying to get illustrations to upload on Flickr before saying "Screw it" and other technical problems.

1 Book, 5 Minutes -- Laura Flanders' new book, Blue Grit. We all love it. You will too. Go buy it or get it at your library but read it.

Don Imus -- While we were laughing and kicking back, Ava and C.I. were working their ass off. They wrote this. They wrote several versions (read Jim's note). This is hard hitting and strong. You'll love it. The real idea behind this was that Ava and C.I. would use various points from various TV commentaries they've written over the last few years and that would count as their TV commentary for the edition. Instead, you ended up with two things by them.

Mailbag -- short feature, short feature! :D

What Would A Mud Flap Say If A Mud Flap Could Flap... -- This took awhile. I think it's a strong piece of writing. Rebecca really wanted this and she wasn't the only one but this was the piece she was advocating for. We wrote several drafts of this repeatedly (all of us participating).

10 CDs listened to while writing this edition -- Short feature, short feature! :D

Highlights -- Betty, Elaine, Rebecca, Wally, Cedric and I wrote this.

McCain News -- repost of Wally and Cedric's joint-post. When the technical problems were starting, Ty noted there were huge requests for 2 reposts. This was one of them and since both were short, it was decided to do this to get something up.

VOTE INSANE! VOTE JOHN MCCAIN! -- this was the other. This is a repost of C.I.'s hilarious thing on Crazy John McCain.

Be sure to check out "Ruth's Report" and Ma's "Macaroni Coleslaw in the Kitchen." Here's C.I.'s
"Iraq snapshot" and, you'll notice, last week's little war resister punk got his butt kicked (by a professor):

Monday, April 16, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Moqtada al-Sadr's walks out on the Iraqi parliament, a spoiled brat gets a public spanking, the US military announces the deaths of two more service members in Iraq, and Norman Solomon, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky talk realities of war with Andrea Lewis and Amy Goodman.


Starting with news of war resistance. The sound you here is a long WHIIIIINE as a spoiled brat gets a public spanking. Clancy Sigal (at The Daily Trojan) walks spoiled brat through some basic realities in his response column to the realities of broken contracts:

We've been here before during Vietnam, when the desertion rate skyrocketed as soldiers, sailors and marines began to realize what a bogus, pointless war it was. War-resistance inside the military, including going AWOL, finally broke the Army and forced the Nixon administration to the bargaining table. Once again we're faced with a dilemma: Who violated the 'contrat' -- the government or the runaway soldiers? Pope Benedict XVI deserted the Nazi Wehrmacht. Muhammad Ali refused to serve in the Vietnam War, which he believed was racist and warranted. And so it goes. Does the U.S. government, and its military and Veterans Administration, honor or dishonor its 'contract' by forcing combat-weary GIs back into battle through its notorious 'stop loss' policy of refusing to discharge soldiers on due ldate and extending their deployments in a horrendous civil war? Does the Pentagon honor its obligation when it sends medically unfit soldiers back to the meat-grinder - and, again notoriously, without the proper equipment or weapons?

Again, the sound you hear is a pampered, spolied brat getting a public spanking via Clancy Sigal. In other news of war resisters, Bully Boy's escalation has had many effects -- more Iraqis killed, more US service members killed and Linjamin Mull, Patrick Maloney (Canoe News) reports, reached the decision to self-check out of the US military and move to Canada following Bully Boy's announcement. Linjamin Mull was a NYC social worker who signed up as a result of "a crushing student debt" and achieved the rank of specialist in the army. Meanwhile, Jenny Deam (Denver Post) reports on Justin Colby who served as a medic in Iraq and made the decision to self-check out on July 4th of last year and moved to Canada. Deam notes, "Army figures released last week show 1,710 soldiers have deserted in the past six months. The numbers are rising as the war goes on: 3,101 walked away between October 2005 and October 2006; 2,659 walked away during the 12 months before."

Yes, it is a movement, a growing movement, an ever growing movement. Mull and Colby are part of a movement of war resistance within the military that also includes Dean Walcott,
Ehren Watada (whose next court-martial is scheduled for July 16th), Camilo Mejia, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.


In Iraq today the six cabinets filled by Moqtada al-Sadr's block are now vacant. Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) explains: "A key Shiite Muslim bloc in Iraq's governmental pledged Sunday to quit over Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a move that would further weaken the country's leadership at a time of soaring sectarian violence." Edward Wong and Graham Bowley (New York Times) listed "protest at the refusal of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to set a timetable for American troops to withdraw from Iraq." (No link. Currently the New York Times has 'withdrawn' the story. You can find it quoted here.) AFP quotes a statement issued by the puppet of the occupation: "Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki welcomed the announcement of his eminence Muqtada al-Sadr." The puppet was the only putting up a brave front, the Turkish Press quotes White House flack Dana Perino who steps away from her stand up schtick on the beleaguered US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales long enough to declare, "Doalitions in those types of parliamenty demoncracies can come and go." That funny Perino! "Democracies"! She cracks herself up. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted: "The Sadr movement controls six cabinet posts and a quarter of seats in Iraq's parliament. The pullout follows one of Iraq's bloodiest weekends in months. McClatchy newspapers is reporting nearly 300 people were killed in violenace around Iraq Saturday." [CBS and AP's count on Sunday for the Karbala bombing Saturday was 47.] Jim Muir (BBC News) offers analysis, "Nobody expects Mr Sadr's move to bring the government down. Nor did observers believe that was his intention. Rather than leave the cabinet seats empty, he himself suggested that the six abandoned portfolios be given to non-partisan independents, and some of his aides urged that competent technocrats be appointed. . . . The Sadr bloc has 32 of the 275 seats in the current parliament, and intends to continue its activities there and in the Shia coalition, despite withdrawing from government. Another member of the Shia coalition, the Fadhila party, announced early last month that it was pulling out of that alliance because of the government's poor performance and sectarian quota composition. But only if other major factions such as the main Sunni bloc and Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqi List were also to walk out of the government, would it be at risk of collapse." Ross Colvin and Yara Bayoumy (Reuters) note "concerns about whether Sadr's Mehdi Army, which Washington calls the biggest threat to Iraq's security, will maintain the low profile it has so far duing a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad."

Democracy installed into Iraq and controlled by the US, Perino's so funny. The reality of Iraq is noted by Dahr Jamail (Al Jazeera) who reports that attorney Badie Arief Izzat wasn't in Iraq today "for the trial of former Iraqi officials charged with participating in attacks against the Kurdish minority in the 1980s" due to being spirited out of the country and to Damascus by the US military who, when he was due to be arrested (for statements that Iran was responsible for the gassing, not Iraq) by Iraqi security forces, "surrounded him". Izzat tells Jamail, "I was taken to an American safe house in the Green Zone and guarded by US forces who refused to hand me over to the Iraqi court." US forces spiriting lawyers out of a country to protect them, from so-called 'insurgents,' but the Iraq legal system? Spin it, Perino, spin it.

And when she does, expect her remarks to be carefully jotted down and reported with a straight -- and non-questioning -- face. Today on KPFA's The Morning Show, Andrea Lewis spoke with Norman Solomon on a number of topics including any lesson learned by the media after they knowingly and eagerly enlisted as telemarketers in order to sell the illegal war:


Lewis: So, you think the media gets that now? That the war wasn't such a great idea and that maybe they need to have some distance? I should say the major media.

Solomon: Well, you know, it's like what Mark Twain said about smoking is easy to quit, I've done that hundreds of times. And so, after every war, especially it turns sour, there's this kind of high profile on the sleeves soul searching and then its back to square one. So I do think if you ever have another situation where there's a country called "Iraq" and a dictator called "Saddam Hussein" and a lot of talk about "weapons of mass destruction" there will be some exempliary skepticism from the US media but, that aside, I mean change "Iraq" to "Iran" and just a somewhat different configuration, we're on the same boat -- the same sort of madness -- if it's up to the mass media, that again is where independent media such as the one we're on, many other efforts around the country, web TV, radio, print is really essential to kind of counter and try to oppose and overcome the sort of, I won't say natural, but in place spin cycle that comes through. I know we'll mention this a little later but let me be sure and plug here there is an independent media guide out in Marin and North Bay and we're having a benefit sponsored by the Marin Peace & Justice coalition and Students for Social Responsibility. Everybody's invited to come see a pretty far along rough cut of this film. It's this Saturday night, the 21st of April, at 7:30 pm at the College of Marin in Kentfield in what they call Oleney Hall.

Tickets to the showing are $8 and the event is wheel chair accessible. The film bears the same title as Norman Solomon's most recent book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death. Though the themes are similar this isn't a Solomon reading his book in front of a camera -- it's an actual documentary film. Sean Penn narrates the film. For a review of the book click here. The war was also addressed on Democracy Now! today as Amy Goodman interviewed Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn for the hour:


AMY GOODMAN: Vice president Cheney is saying this war can be won.

NOAM CHOMSKY: There's an interesting study being done right now by a former Russian soldier in Afghanistan in the late 1980's, he's now a student in Toronto who's comparing the Russian press and the Russian political figures and military leaders, what they were saying about Afghanistan, comparing it with what Cheney, others and the press are saying about Iraq and not to your great surprise, change a few names and it comes out about the same.
They were also saying the war in Afghanistan could be won and they were right. If they had increased the level of violence sufficiently, they could have won the war in Ira--in Afghanistan. They're also pointing out -- of course they describe correctly the heroism of the Russian troops, the efforts to bring assistance to the poor people of Afghanistan, to protect them from U.S.-run Islamic fundamentalist terrorist forces, the dedication, the rights they have won for the people in Afghanistan, and the warning that if they pull out it will be total disaster, mayhem, they must stay and win.
Unfortunately they were right about that too, when they did pull out, it was a total disaster. The U.S.-backed forces tore the place to shreds, so terrible that the people even welcomed the Taliban when they came in. So yes, those arguments can always be given. The Germans could have argued if they had the force that they didn't, that they could have won the Second World War. I mean the question is not can you win. The question is should you be there.
[. . .]

HOWARD ZINN: And of course it was an educational experience for us. Noam was talking about in response to your question about victory and winning. And the question is, of course, why should we win if winning means destroying a country? And there's still people who say, oh, we could have won the Vietnam war, as if the question was, you know, can we win or can we lose, instead of what are we doing to these people.
And, yes, Noam said, yes, we could win in Iraq by destroying all of Iraq. The Russians could have won Afghanistan by destroying all of Afghanistan. We could have won in Vietnam by dropping nuclear bombs instead of killing two million people in Vietnam, killing 10 million people in Vietnam. And that would be considered victory, who would take satisfaction in that?
What we saw in Vietnam is, I think what people are seeing in Iraq. And that is huge numbers of people dying for no reason at all. What we saw in Vietnam was the American army being sent halfway around the world to a country, which was not threatening us and we were destroying the people in the country. And here in Iraq, we're going the other way, we're also going halfway around the world to do the same thing to them. And our experience in Iraq contradicted as I think the experiences of people who are on the ground in Iraq contradicted again and again the statements of American officials.
The statements of the high military, statements like, oh, we're only bombing military targets, oh, these are accidents when so many civilians are killed. And, yes, as Cheney said, victory is around the corner. What we saw in Vietnam was horrifying. And it was obviously horrifying even to G.I.'s in Vietnam because they began to come back from Vietnam and oppose the war and formed Vietnam Veterans against the war.
We saw villages as far away from any military target as you can imagine, absolutely destroyed. And children killed and their graves still fresh by American jet planes coming over in the middle of the night. When I hear them talk about John McCain as a hero, I say to myself, oh, yeah, he was a prisoner and prisoners are maltreated and everywhere and this is terrible. But John McCain, like the other American fliers, what were they doing? They were bombing defenseless people. And so, yes Vietnam is something that by the way, is still not taught very well in American schools. I spoke to a group of people in an advanced history class not long ago, 100 kids, asked them how many people here have heard of the My Lai Massacre? No hand was raised. We are not teaching -- if we were teaching the history of Vietnam as it should be taught, then the American people from the start would have opposed the war instead of waiting three or four years for a majority of the American people to declare their opposition to the war.

Turning to England, the so-called 'war on terror' lost some milage today when one of the popularizers of the phrase decided to drop it. Al Jazeera reports that "war on terror" is as out of date as gaucho pants according the Britain's international development secretary Hilary Benn who states: "We do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone". However, that is the least of the problems for Bully Boy that are crossing the Atlantic. The Times of London reports that an inquest into the March 21, 2003 British helicopter crash opened with the cornorer Andrew Walker charging that the US military provided no assistance -- "inexcusable" was the word used to describe the non-action, that the US witnesses were no where to be found, that the inquest was provied only with the Jamgan Report and "not allowed to see an engineering report that could reveal problems with the helicopter" and that "Americans have also declined to let him see a recording by an air mission command aircraft, which is thought to reveal what the helicopter pilots see before the crash." And, still in England, Mark Oliver (Guardian of London) covers the release of photos from the postmortem on Iraqi Baha Mousa who died in British custody and whose death will be addressed by the upper house of parliament (House of Lords) tomorrow.

Turning to Iraq, Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) reports: "Over the past five months, enemy tactics have turned squarely against U.S. and Iraqi troops. As sectarian killings and kidnappings have fallen by about 70 percent in Diyala, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops have increased by a corresponding amount, according to Col. David W. Sutherland, the top U.S. commander in the province." Richard A. Oppel Jr. (New York Times) notes the tactics of the resistance, "They meaneuver in squads, like the American infantrymen they try to kill. One squad fires furiously so another can attack from a better position. They operate in bad weather, knowing American helicopters and surveillance drones are grounded. Some carry G.P.S. receivers so mortar teams can calculate the coordinates of American armored vehicles. They kidnap and massacre police officers." Oppel also notes that in Diyala and Baquba, you're dealing with two populations -- Shia and Sunnie and that "Shiite-dominated security forces in the city inflamed tensions by persecuting Sunnis". The US government backs the attacks by training the attackers, by funding them. The US government created the split after invading the country. Sahar (McClatchy News' Inside Iraq) makes that point very clear by noting a friend named Um Noor: "She was happily married for twenty years, when Iraq was occupied. After a while strange, little used words start flying around. Sunni . . . Shiite . . . Sunni . . . Shite . . . Then fighting started breaking out because of this long submerged difference. In her neighborhood, as in the greater majority of Baghdad's neighborhoods, no one is really sure who on their bloc is Sunni, or Shiite; and nobody really cares. Soon after, the IEDs and car bombs started taking their toll from people still bewildered as to: Why is this happeng? BOOM! She loses her husbad, on his way to work, a Shiite. Being a Sunni herself, she is urged -- very strongly -- to move away; their part of Amil is Shiite controled. Having nowhere to go, she stays. A car stops in front of their home. BANG, BANG, BANG! She loses her son (20), her brother, and her nephew. She takes her remaining children and flees, finding no haven -- except in Abu Ghraib, (Sunni controlled) where she lives in perpetural fear lest her dark secret be uncovered: that her kids are -- of course -- Shiite. Her two remaining sons (16 and 10) live imprisoned in their hut; she has buried all their IDs and tells everyone that they got lost . . . . . . . . and as a result they cannot receive rations. They are starving to death. How, and why, has it suddenly become important, this Sunni-Shiite business; and since when did Iraqis care?"

In today's violence . . .

Bombings?

CNN reports 8 dead from a Baghdad bombing in the Karrada district (23 wounded). Reuters notes a bombing in Ishaqi that killed 9 (10 wounded), a mortar attack in Mahmudiya that killed 3 (18 wounded),

Shootings?

CBS and AP report a mass shooting in Mosul which left 13 Iraqi soldiers dead and 4 more wounded. Ed Johnson (Bloomberg News) reports on the shooting deaths of three Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi who were shot by US soldiers in what the US military says was a "mistake." Reuters reports that the US military shot a man in Baghdad who was "armed" and that "local Iraqis" stated "the dead man was an airport highway security guard"; Mohammed Abdullah al-Zubaidi was shot dead in Mosul, Talal al-Jalil was shot dead in Mosul (he had been "the Dean of the Political Science College"), a tribal leader shot dead in Baiji and an imam in Hawija.Corpses?

Reuters notes 7 corpses discovered in Falluja, 3 in Hawija, and 6 in Mosul.

Today, the US military announced: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier died when a combat security patrol was attacked with small arms fire in a southwestern section of the Iraqi capital April 16. One other Soldier was wounded during the attack." And they announced: "A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died and one other was wounded when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in a southern section of Baghdad April 16. The unit was conducting a security patrol in the area when the attack occured." ICCC reports the total number of US service members who have died in the illegal war is 3308. (Sunday the 3,000 mark was passed.)


















Posted by at

Friday, April 13, 2007

What to write . . .

Friday when I pasted the snapshot (which will be at the end) but Saturday now. Elaine's already crawled into bed. Me? I'm staring at a blank screen and wondering what to write?

I could write about the "last show" and how great I'm sure that was . . . hearing it end. :D C.I. told me last month the show was officially toast and being taken off the week day schedule. I have no idea who "Lionel" is but he can't be any worse than the whiney ass Sam Seder.

I could talk about "The Look Of Love." And maybe I will. If I'd heard the song before, I don't remember. But after the group (Iraq study group) ended tonight, Rebecca had a musical craving (she had other cravings too) and was talking about needing to hear Dusty Springfield's "The Look Of Love." Dad had that on vinyl. That's a really incredible record. I don't know if the song's all that incredible, the lyrics seem kind of run of the mill. But there's the vocal and it's just really amazing and a horn comes in 2/3s in and I was like, "What?" The arrangement is really cool.

I'll talk about Rebecca's cravings. That's the only thing I accomplished after cutting and pasting the snapshot. She came to the door and asked if I thought the folks would mind if she "ate everything in the fridge." No, they wouldn't. She didn't eat everything. But she was craving bad. She said it was the most intense it has been the entire pregnancy. She ate pickles, which didn't surprise me, but I fixed some mashed potatoes (instant) because she wanted those too and she was popping some stuff in the microwave and about to scream at how long that was taking. :D It's probably a superstition, but I always heard if you crave pickles, you're having a boy. Pickles and lemons and it's a boy. She and Flyboy find out if it's a boy or girl at the doctor's Tuesday.

I could talk about how I'm yawning and thinking if I keep typing, something useful will pop into my mind. I could talk about how that's still not happened! :D

I can note something Tony's dad wanted me to highlight. This is from C.I.'s "NYT: Attempting to popularize 'International Zone'" Friday morning:

The above is from Alissa J. Rubin's "8 Iraqis Killed in Bomb Attack at Legislature" in this morning's New York Times. Micah wondered why the "International Zone" when everyone calls it the "Green Zone"? For starters, the Timid's never been able to think for itself when there's offical-ese to be pushed ("International Zone" certainly advances the lie that it wasn't and isn't a US dominated war and occupation).

And this appears in the snapshot:

Though Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) prefers to call it the "International Zone," as William M. Arkin (Washington Post) notes of the Green Zone, "The Zone is officially known as the international zone, a less inflammatory label that suggests non-U.S. control, but everyone knows the truth."

Tony's dad goes, "I know C.I. has an aversion to 'I was right,' but how about 'As I was saying . . .'?" That made me laugh. I noted a highlight this week about Congress and wanted to say, "Didn't C.I. point out exactly this and make the same comments a week ago?" But I didn't. Leigh Ann and Beau both noted in their e-mails that it happened. Yeah, it did quote the same source, the same things from it, and make the same exact points. It's like when we did "Roundtable" (The Third Estate Sunday Review) and a reader was asking about someone making the same points six days after and C.I. says something like, "I don't want to comment on that." You better believe I would.

We will probably have a small book discussion Sunday. It'll be Laura Flanders new book (and only that). That's not a "small" book. But the discussion will be brief. We all read the book quickly so we could get something together quickly. It's a good book, called Blue Grit. Pick it up if you haven't already.

Other than that, I'm not sure what's on the agenda. I know Ava and C.I. still aren't sure what show they're going to be tackling. There's a sitcom they need to review and they want to do another review of Medium. Ty had an e-mail a few weeks back asking, "Did Ava and C.I. write the review themselves?" They reviewed Medium early on and Jim says it reads like they wrote the bulk of it and maybe all of it. But he thinks it was a group piece because there are too many things in it. (When they did it as a group, there would be multiple points.) He also says that may have been the first one they did themselves and they were just carrying over the same style.

They have to do 52 commentaries a week and that's not easy when you only cover broadcast TV (that's what the bulk of the long term readers have access to at Third). 30 Rock they waited on (I think they were asked) and then support for it high up at NBC was so strong, they could keep waiting for it. Then they found out there would be an "intense" fight to have it renewed so they knew they could save that for the summer. 2005 wasn't so bad because they were just starting out and had all these shows they could review. But 2006 has come along and now 2007. So long running stuff has been reviewed. And their plan this fall through now has been to grab the thing that might be cancelled. Either because it was bad or because it was good and they wanted people to check it out. In addition to Third, they're doing two reviews a week of Spanish language programs for Francisco, Maria and Miguel's Sunday newsletter. So they are really at their breaking points with time and TV.

They really don't think most reality shows can be reviewed (because they're so similar). So that doesn't leave a lot. There's one Law and Order that they've refused to review (or watch) because they know somone in the cast and don't want to trash the show. There's the Sunday soap on ABC, Cold Case, one show on Monday (I forget which one, Ava was telling me about it this week), a new show on Wednesday nights (that they'll grab week after next) and not a whole lot more. See, the networks gave up on Saturday nights if you didn't notice. You get repeats on Saturdays. They'll probably be a few summer TV shows that come on this summer but no more than five or six. So it's hard to get enough material to do a weekly thing.

"TV: The not-so-universal White Boy blues" was the one they did Sunday and I love, love that one. But don't say that to them. Start telling them they did something great and they'll freak out about the fact that they have to write another one in a few hours and how will they do that if you've "showered" them with praise. In the roundtable, Dona said she'd save all the editorials and all the TV commentaries if she was saving something to remember this time. I was talking about how I'd be pissed if, after I stopped blogging, Google went and deleted my site. (I don't know that they would but we were talking about when we plan to all stop posting.)

I would too because I really like my site. I don't think it's "the best." But I do think it's a nice record of where I was at and where I grew.

It's funny because I spent an hour and a half just staring at the screen thinking I had nothing to write and now I want to keep writing and writing. :D I don't know if I'll be able to "go dark" in November of 2008. Maybe I'm like an addict now or something?

I do enjoy blogging but most of the time, I don't have time. Between work, class, relationship, friends and other stuff, who has the time?

And I'll miss the e-mails too. Leigh Ann and Beau e-mail more than any other people and I think I'd be lost if I didn't have one of them saying, "Good point" or "You really lost me." :D
Sometimes I lose myself too.

I'm yawning too much, better go to bed. Wouldn't you know it would happen when I finally have a topic I want to write about. But, thinking about staring at the screen and feeling like I had nothing to say, I do get how Ava and C.I. really don't like the praise. They know that every Sunday, the bulk of the readers are coming by for their review. They know that it is the calling card for Third. And that's a lot of pressure. When you start telling them, "That was your best!" I bet it does get tough to try to write something because it is added pressure. So I get it now.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Friday, April 13, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war will reach 3300 shortly (3299 currently), tensions flare between northern Iraq and Turkey and the refugee crisis continues so the US Senate offers help to "up to 500" of the estimated 3 million Iraqis internally and externally displaced.

In war resister news, we'll focus on KPFA and Brian Edwards-Tiekert. Responding to a commentary by Marc Sapir in The Berkeley Daily Planet last week, Edwards-Tiekert wanted to address the issue of war resisters. Edwards-Tiekert is an important part of KPFA's news staff and does strong work, but appears to think much more is being covered than actually is. Sapir, sharing his feelings and fears regarding KPFA, wrote (this was not the thrust of his commentary), "How could KPFA be a useful tool for the GI resisters' movement, the immigrants' rights and sanctuary movements, the prison reform and opposition movements, the new sds [SDS] (already at 160 chapters), . . . if such an edict is upheld?" Sapir is referring to the fact that KPFA can promote events; however, they can not say "Be there" (as Sasha Lilley explained on the Listeners' Report earlier this month). Edwards-Tiekert grabs the subsection of that sentence and responds (this was not the thrust of his response), "Clearly, he [Marc Sapir] wasn't listening the week Aaron Glantz traveled to Fort Lewis, Washington, to produce up-to-the minute rports on the failed court martial of First Lieutenant Ehren Watada." Was Edwards-Tiekert? Aaron Glantz' reports were largely filed for Free Speech Radio News and re-aired duing the KPFA Evening News and during Aileen Alfandary's newsbreaks during The Morning Show. Sandra Lupien and Alfandary each spoke with Glantz once during the court-martial on programs other than the Free Speech Radio News. But, as Edwards-Tiekert well knows, Free Speech Radio News is an independent program, it is not a KPFA program.

Aaron Glantz did a wonderful job reporting on the court-martial for Free Speech Radio News, for IPS, for OneWorld.net. His voice gave out and, possibly, had that not happened he would have done more reporting on it for KPFA. But in terms of reporting (not interviews days after the mistrial was called), Edwards-Tiekert appears to believe that Glantz was reporting on KPFA programs more than he was. This could result from the fact that it was usually announced (by the news staff) that he would be reporting but, in the morning or evening, what instead aired was a rebroadcast (sometimes edited down) of a report Glantz had done for Free Speech Radio News.

Ehren Watada's court-martial is important. His upcoming court-martial () will also be important and, hopefully, KPFA will do a better job covering it than they did with the February one. For that coverage, Aaron Glantz deserves praise. KPFA? Not so much. That was February. Since Watada's court-martial, Agustin Aguayo and Mark Wilkerson have been court-martialed. Aguayo was court-martialed in Germany, possibly that's why it wasn't covered (reading wires doesn't really replace first person reporting)? Wilkerson was in Texas. Texas is much closer to California than DC (Edwards-Tiekert notes KPFA's DC coverage in his response) but it might as well be across the Atlantic. What of Robert Zabala's historic court case? Where was KPFA? Again, reading wire reports (or local press) on air doesn't really replace on the spot reporting.

Edwards-Tiekert muses, "Perhaps Sapir doesn't listen much to the radio station he maligns." As Ruth pointed out regarded Sasha Lilley's declarations in the Listeners' Report, Lilley doesn't seem to listen a great deal. In the listners' report she maintained that KPFA news staff promoted, on air, the KPFA webpage of local events when, in fact, that wasn't the case. KPFA is an important radio station and a historic one. Edwards-Tiekert is a strong member of the news staff. His commentary (and recent call in on air to Larry Bensky) only fans simmering flames for many. I'm not interested in that. (Ruth may be. She can write whatever she wants in her space.) I am interested in war resisters.

Edwards-Tiekert may feel Watada was covered by the KPFA news. He really wasn't. (Off topic, but needs noting again, Philip Maldari, not part of the news staff, did a wonderful job last summer interviewing Bob Watada.) That false impression may come from on air announcements such as, "Tomorrow morning in the first half-hour of The Morning Show, Aileen Alfandary will speak with Aaron Glantz . . ." -- announcements that were made of coverage that never took place. (That's not a slam at Alfandary. Glantz' voice was giving out early on.) But announcements of intended coverage are not actual coverage. And re-airing reports done for a non-KPFA produced program (Free Speech Radio News) on KPFA news and news breaks does not indicate that KPFA itself provided coverage.

In February, Kyle Snyder was hauled away in handcuffs (and in his boxers) by Canadian police. Joci Perri (Citizenship and Immigration) stated the arrest was requested by the US military and that deportation was supposed to follow. Did KPFA listeners hear about that on the news? Joshua Key is being 'shadowed.' Winnie Ng reported the incident that happened at her home. She was visited by three men, she was told they were Canadian police. They were looking for Key (Joshua, Brandi and their children stayed with Ng early on after moving to Canada). Ng's character was called into question (including by some 'friends' in Canada) and the police said it never happened. Turns out, it did happen. The Canadian police, WOOPS, did send out one officer . . . with two members of the US military. Has the KPFA news informed listeners about those developments? Dean Walcott self-checked out of the US military and went to Canada in December of 2006. How often has his name came up during news breaks or newscasts?

Here's where the real fault is, the real problem. Four years into the illegal war and KPFA still has not created a program to focus on Iraq. Flashpoints started to cover the first Gulf War. KPFA can't spare one half-hour or hour a week for a program that focuses on Iraq? Of course they can. The fact that they haven't is more embarrassing than any of the back and forths or the old history (covered in both Edwards-Tiekert and Sapir's commentaries). Is KPFA frozen or paralyzed when it comes to new programming? No. In fact it did an election series for the 2006 elections. One would think that an illegal war was at least as important as a mid-term election.

Dean Walcott, the latest to go public, part of the growing movement of war resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Camilo Mejia, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.


Yesterday in Iraq, the Green Zone was the target of an attack. AFP notes today that the US military is now saying that the bombing in the parliament's cafeteria killed only one person (but "an Iraqi security officer" maintains "three people died"). Though Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) prefers to call it the "International Zone," as William M. Arkin (Washington Post) notes of the Green Zone, "The Zone is officially known as the international zone, a less inflammatory label that suggests non-U.S. control, but everyone knows the truth." Bushra Juhi (AP) reports that al Qaeda is claiming responsibility for the bombing and that it was a suicide bombing and that the Iraqi parliament met today ("about 90 minutes") but turnout was low due to the traffic ban and to the fact that many were visiting the wounded from yesterday's bombing. While AP repeats that the culprit is thought to be a bodyguard to a Sunni lawmaker, The Australian reports that three cafeteria workers are being questioned as well as "some parliamentary guards". CNN notes that this is due to the suspicion that the bombing was an 'inside job'. Robert Burns (AP) reveals: "The U.S. military will not take over security of the Iraqi parliament building in the wake of the deadly suicide bombing in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, a top commander said Friday. Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said "it is clear we still have a long way to go to provide stability and security to Iraq." Michael Howard (The Guardian of London) informs, "US officials admitted last night that the bombing of the Iraqi parliament shows that not even the heavily fortified Green Zone is safe any more, despite the security crackdown launched earlier this year in the Iraqi capital." Despite that reality, Robin Wright and Karin Brulliard (Washington Post) report that John McCain, "who this week spoke of 'the first glimmers' of progress in the new U.S. effort, said the attack on the parliament building does not change the 'larger picture'."

Or, as William M. Arkin (Washington Post) observes, "For the past few weeks, we have been told by the administration and the military that the Baghdad Security Plan and the surge are working. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had his Snoopy in the tank moment walking through a marketplace in a well-oiled photo op, accompanied of course by American Humvees and soldiers and roof-top snipers. The Senator and his delegation then repaired to the 'relative safety' of the Green Zone, speaking of their safe drive to and from the airport to downtown, a trip by dignitaries that is usually made by helicopter. The boast itself spoke volumes about the truth of the Green Zone, and of Baghdad."

Security and refugess was a topic today on KPFA's The Morning Show, where Andrea Lewis and Aaron Glantz spoke with guests including Dahr Jamail and Sarah Holewinski (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict). (20 minutes in, Dahr speaks for the first time other than the normal greetings.)

Dahr: Well without a doubt, I think offering someone $2,500 when they've had a loved one killed by occupation forces is - is quite an insult especially now with the rate of inflation and the conditions in Iraq. I think the primary thing that I'd absolutely agree with her with is that the Iraqi people who are sufffering right now as we speak and all those who have lost loved ones certainly deserve and justifiably have earned compensation levels that are very, very fair and, in my opinion, I think that they should be compensation levels like we see in the United States when someone dies in a plane crash and there's a lawsuit or when someone dies in a car crash, typically millions of dollars are awarded to someone. How would people in the United States react if they lost a loved one and the government offered them $2,500?
[. . .]
I would start by amending the numbers that Nabil just said. I have updated numbers from meeting with Sybella Wilkes yesterday who is the UNHCR regional public information officer. And according to UNHCR, there are, there's 1.2 million is the minimum estimate they have in Syria alone. The governement of Syria, who UNHCR admitted probably has more accurate figures than they do, estimates there's between 1.4 and 1.5 million Iraqi refugees here [Syria], hundreds of thousands of those are Shia as well. I think people in the US are led to believe that it's only the Sunni population that's leaving and, while they are the majority, it's important to note that there's a giant number and growing number of Shia up here in Syria as well. But really the situation is really -- even just those numbers, as if they're not staggering enough by themselves -- the situation here is UNHCR has only actually registered approximately 70,000 of these people. So that means these are only the 70,000 that literally have so little of anything that they have to literally go there for food and in some way to find some housing. So the crisis is certainly going to grow exponentially as these other Iraqis here, and I have met with many of them, are living on their savings right now. What are they going to do when their savings run out? Syria right now has approximately a 20 to 25% unemployment rate. Add in another between 1.2 to 1.5 million Iraqis, so already that figure is too low. And as time persists, of course, the situation will worsen. And we have between 30 and 50,000 more Iraqis coming into Syria alone every single month.

Andrea Lewis: And Dahr what are some of the refugees telling you, other than concerns about their finances which obviously are important, what other things are you hearing from the people you're talking to?

Dahr: Well I'm actually sitting here right now with two friends who just came out yesterday from Baquba and they're telling me things like the US military has absolutely zero control of that city. There's only one street where one kilometer of that street is controlled by the US military and that's because that's primarily where their base is. The banks in Baquba have zero money whatsoever. It's a ghost town in the middle of the day. There's no marekts open. Of course, no one is working. And, as they described it, al Qaeda is in total control of that entire city and they state that the US military there is doing little to nothing to stop them.

Aaron Glantz: Well that's where Zarchawy was killed and we all remember Abu Musab al-Zarchawy. He was a big enemy and now he's dead and he was killed in Baquba.

Dahr: Right and clearly the situation has done nothing but degrade. As they said, it's like something out of a scene of a movie where literally it's a ghost town, nobody leaves their homes, nobody goes out. Even traveling from there to Baghdad, which is just barely 20 miles away, people just don't even make that trip. For them to even come up to Syria, they had to go, completely bypass Baghdad, and go to the north in order to come up here. Of course it was very far out of their way. But that just gives you an idea of how horrible the security situation is. There's literally no security and no regular life there to be found.


Turning to news from the US Senate, Reuters reports that legislation passed allowing for the admission of a whopping (yes, that is sarcasm) "500 Iraqi and Afghan translators into the United States a year because their lives are in danger for helping U.S. forces during the wars."


Last month, Tom Hayden (Huffington Post) noted that it was past time for US citizens to ask exactly who their tax dollars supported in Iraq. This month (at The Huffington Post), Hayden notes: "The time has come to understand the new de facto US policy in Iraq: to support, fund, arm and train a sectarian Shi'a-Kurdish state, one engaged in ethnic cleansing, mass detention and murder of Sunni Arabs." Hayden argues that the training of police fails to acknowledge who is being trained and for what -- as with El Salvador the 'blind eye' is a pretense upon the part of the US government. Tom Hayden proposes a series of recommendations including "peace advocates and critics must focus on the new reality that American blood and taxes are being spent on propping up a sectarian government that wants to carry out an ethnic cleansing of the Sunni population."

Keeping the above in mind and turning to the northern section of Iraq, yesterday Umit Enginsoy (Turkish Daily News) reported on the conference in DC regarding the the upcoming, proposed referendum that would etermine the fate of Kirkuk (an Iraqi citiy that "sits on nearly 40 percent of Iraq's oil") which Iraqi president Jalal Talabani is pushing (Talabani fell ill as the latest wave of the crackdown began earlier this year, he was represented at the conference by his son Qubad Talabani who is also "the representative for the Kurdistan regional government"). The issues revolve around the oil, obviously, and also around the demographic makeup of Kirkuk and who gets a vote with Turcomen and Arabs concerned over what "hundreds of thousands of Kurds [who] have flocked into Kirkuk in recent years while the number of Kurds expelled under Saddam's regime could be measured by tens of thousands."


Laith al-Saud (CounterPunch) explores the issue of the resettling, "Since the 2003 invasion of the country myth has taken precedence over history and Kurdish politicians have adopted the methods of that other myth-based nation-state in the region-Israel, to establish claims . . . During the invasion, Kurdish peshmerga (militias) entered Kirkuk and established de facto control of the city. Since then, as has been reported by the Center for Research on Globalization, Kurdish militias have forcibly evicted people from their homes, engaged in Murder, assassination and a slow ethcnice cleansing. The first victims in this regard have been the Arabs. Since the Arabs there are largely associated with Baa'th policy they have seen little support from the regime in Baghdad. Less publicized has been the targeting of Assyrians and other smaller minorities in the region. But the largest group in the city -- and the one that promises to be the most resistant to Kurdish aggression -- is the Turcomen. Ethnically Turks, the Turcomen have lived in the area for over eight-hundred years and have strong ties to Turkey."


Patrick Cockburn (CounterPunch) notes of the referendum: "The Kurds expect that large areas of eastern, northern and western Ninevah province will join theKRG, not not Mosul city itself because it has an Arab majority. The Kurds are absolutely determined to get what they consider their rights after years or persecution, expulsion and genocide. They rightly think that they now have an historic opportuniy to create a powerful near independent state within Iraq: They are America's only effective allies in Iraq; they are powerful in Baghdad; The non-Kurdish parts of the Iraqi government are weak."

At the conference, the US appeared to waffle (we'll get back to the point). Michael Kuser and Guy Dinmore (Financial Times of London) note that Turkey's concern is that "an independent Kurdish state" will be created. This stems from Turkey's own issues in the southern part of its country where a historical and ongoing battle by Kurdish inhabitants of the area to gain self-autonamy has been rejected.If Iraq is partitioned off into regions and/or Kirkuk and other northern areas become their own independent body, Turkey's concerns include how such a breaking up could effect their own country. Chris Toensing (Foreign Policy In Focus) summed up the recent conflict within Turkey: "Since the invasion [of Iraq], the Turkish military and security services -- known to Turks as the 'deep state' -- have reasserted themselves, to the detriment of Turkish democracy. They are resisting even the Justice and Development Party's modest efforts to reach out to the country's Kurdish population, and inveighing against any ceasfire with the renewed Kurdish insurgency in the southeast. Far-right social elements associated with the 'deep state' are rallying in favor of chauvinistic versions of Turkish nationalism; in January, one such militan murdered an Armenian-Turkish journalist who sought to reconcile Turks' and Armenians' understanding of the 1915 Aremian genocide."

Another concern on the part of Turkey pointed out by Kuser and Dinmore is that their border is not respected by "combat rebels from the Kurdish Wokers party (PKK)". Lebanon's The Daily Star reports that Turkish General Yasar Buyukanit has "asked the government" of Turkey "for approval to launch a cross-border incursion into northern Iraq, signaling growing frustration over a lack of action by Iraqi and US forces against Kurdish guerrillas. This follows, as Umit Enginsoy notes, that the head of Iraq's Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, stated last week if Turkey did not stop interfering in Iraq's northern region, Iraq would "retaliate by intervening in Turkey's Kurdish-related matters. The rising tensions come as Turkey's president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, prepares to step down (the parliament electes a new president in May). The Turkish Daily News presents a sample of Buyukanit's press conference where he touched on a number of issues, including political ones.

As the tensions rise and some commentators wonder what the US is doing -- signaling both ways is the answer. Fortunately, the issue is in questionable hands: Hoover Institute's Barbara Stephenson is now a 'diplomat' ("deputy senior advisor and coordinator to the secretary of state"). In 1998, she was a "homemaker" and apparently $519,200 in donations is all it takes to buy a job at the State Department under US Secretary of State and Anger Condi Rice. (It's also a good little circle jerk since, Rice was "the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute"). Stephenson's main claim to fame/infamy may be her declaration of Iraqis, "They need to want this more than we do." Spoken by the person who some would argue bought her way into an administration.

From the north to the south, Ali al-Fadhily (IPS) reports on the protests that took place Monday calling for foreign troops (all non-Iraqi troops) to leave the country. Historian Mahmood al-Lamy tells al-Fadhily, "Basra is the biggest southern city and the only Iraqi city that has a port near the Gulf. It is now controlled by various militias who fight each other from time to time over an oil smuggling business that is flourishing under the occupation."
Simon Assaf (Great Britain's Socialist Worker) reminds that the protest on Monday (in Najaf) "was the biggest in Iraq since the massive unity demonstrations in the early days of the occupation" and that uniformed Iraqi soldiers joined in the protest.

Bombings?

Hussein Kadhmim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports one civilian dead from a roadside bombing in Baghdad, a Baghdad mortar attack that killed one person and left 15 wounded,
"a primary school was exploded in Instar village of Bani Saad," "a public clinic at (Tibtib) village" was bombed, and "LC Falih Hassan of the Iraqi national police was killed today after a road side bomb targeted his vehicle today after noon. Three of his body guards were killed." CBS and AP note a Baghdad roadside bomb claimed the life of a police officer and left four other officers injured as well as one citizen injured. Reuters reports a second Baghdad mortar attack killed two people and left 8 more wounded, a Hilla bombing killed a police officer and left three others wounded, and a mortar attack in Iskandariya wounded 10 people.

Shootings?

Hussein Kadhmim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a woman wounded during an attack on a police patrol. Reuters reports that Mohammed Abd al-Hameed ("Mosque imam in the northern city of Mosul . . . well known figure in the Sunni Muslim Scholars' Association") was shot dead in Mosul, three guards of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party offices were wounded in an attack in Hilla, and an attack on a barber shop left two people "seriously wounded."

Corpses?

Hussein Kadhmim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports five corpses discovered in Baghdad,
Reporters Without Borders notes that two corpses were discovered in Mosul yesterday: Iman Yussef Abdallah ("journalist for a radio station operated by a group of Mosul trade unions") and her husband. She "was the second journalist to be murdered in Mosul this year and the 13th in Iraq."

Today the US military announced: "A Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier died April 12 due to a non-battle related cause." And they announced: "An MND-B Soldier died when a patrol was attacked with small arms fire north of the Iraqi capital. The unit was conducting a security patrol when the attack occurred." [Both were noted last night. They were announced Friday Iraq time.] And they announced: "An MND-B Soldier died and one other was wounded when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device south of Baghdad April 12. The unit was conducting a security patrol in the area when the attack occurred." And they announced: "Two MND-B Soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded when their patrol base came under attack by anti-Iraqi forces south of Baghdad April 12. Two Iraqi interpreters were also killed in the attack." ICCC's total for the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3299 and 52 is the total for the month thus far.

Finally, the Austin American-Stateman weighs in with an editorial commenting on the decision by the White House to extend tours of duty to 15 months while, at the same time, searching for someone ( a war 'czar' -- "The first and most obvious is that a war szar already exists: the president of the United States is the commander in chief. The novelty of the idea doesn't make it viable.") to run the illegal war in Iraq and concludes, "It is especially troubling when you consider that the Bush administration is asking more and more from military personnel who can't appoint someone else to do their jobs for them."
















Posted by at

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Law and Disorder, Marjorie Cohn

Thursday, one day to the weekend and I just want to crawl in bed. When it's cold, I think that's my thing to do and I've been cold all day. Even when everyone else wasn't!

But it's time to talk about WBAI's Law and Disorder (on WBAI Monday, it also airs on other stations as well). Remember that they are moving the website and if you go WBAI archives looking for the program it's under "OUT FM" on Mondays.

Michael Ratner and Michael Smith discussed the Supreme Court's decision to refuse to hear the case regarding the Guantanamo prisoners. Instead we have "an alternative system of justice" that "tomorrow it could be for any of us." They talked about enemy combatants and how Bully Boy can designate anyone that (even US citizens) and could torture you, "use hearsay evidence against you," and basically anything at all. "You don't have a lawyer, you don't have a right to go to court" you just get a military committee.

This episode wasn't the Michaels only. Their first guest was Howard Bass who is an ACLU member and attorney and he was one of the ones handling the Minnesota "photo cop ordinance." These are the cameras that photograph people going through a red light. The registered owner is the one who gets the ticket sent to them. It is then the responsibility of the owner to pay or provide the name of the driver of the car. This raised the issue that our court systems are built on: innocent until proven guilty. The red light photo system presumes guilt and the burden of proof is on the guilty. Heidi Boghosian was on this segment and she had several strong questions and points, including who was targeted and how this impacts insurance.

The next segment's guest was NYU law professor Paul Chevigny to discuss the Handschu Consent Decree "the police couldn't surveil" pure political activity. If they suspected criminal activity they needed two civilians and a police's approval per the Handschu Consent Decree. The case was on police abuses and spying. Barbara Handschu, of the National Lawyers Guild, was one of the lead attorneys and Chevigny was also an attorney on this case. In the mid-80s, the decision was reached. In 2002, NYC police claimed Handschu was too restrictive and harming their investigations. So now they only need approval from the NYC Director of Intelligence. That's how they get to film and photograph protests. Heidi pointed out that they are keeping the film and not destroying it. It was supposed to be heard, the case, yesterday but
I'm not finding any news article on it.

I need to correct two things. Margaret Ratner Kunstler was a guest last year and I said she was Michael Ratner's sister. C.I. thought that was funny in real time and corrected me that she wasn't Michael's sister, she was Michael's ex-wife. C.I. said not to worry about it and it was an innocent mistake. But I said the next time I had something, I'd note it. I quoted C.I. a few weeks back on Stanley Abramowitz and pulled something out of the quote. C.I. was here last Friday and Rebecca was joking about that. I had pulled out a thing about Stanley Abramowitz's wife. I didn't realize it was known that C.I. knew her. Rebecca was laughing about that and I was going, "Who was his wife?" It was Ellen Willis and C.I. did write an obit on her so I could have used C.I.'s full quote if I'd known that at the time.

Oh, Heidi also got the ending commentary about how the Justice Department is using 'agreements' and not 'decrees' because they're less binding and they're participating with the local police in the breakdown of our rights to privacy. So that was this week's episode.

Now I mentioned the National Lawyers Guild above (Heidi, the Michaels and Dalia Hashad are all members) and I'll offer a bit of this from an article by the National Lawyers Guild's president, Marjorie Cohn. This is called "U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights:"

The Bush administration is shocked, shocked, that the firing of a few U.S. attorneys has caused such a stir in Washington. After all, the Oval Office says, the President can choose whomever he wants to prosecute federal cases. But the Supreme Court declared in Berger v. United States that a prosecutor's job is to see that justice is done, not to politicize justice. The mass ouster of the top prosecutors had more to do with keeping a grip on power - by manipulating voting rights - than with doing justice. And like the Watergate scandal, the evidence points to a cover-up.
This cover-up revolves around efforts by the Bush administration to disenfranchise African-American voters in communities where the vote would likely be close. George W. Bush came to power in 2000 by a razor-thin margin awarded him by the Supreme Court. During the 2004 election, there were allegations of attempts to disenfranchise African-American voters, especially in Ohio. Yet no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African-American or Native American voters from 2001 to 2006.
Instead, the administration instigated efforts that would further disenfranchise these voters. U.S. attorneys were instructed to prosecute "voter fraud" cases. "Voter fraud" has "become almost synonymous with 'voting while black,'" the New York Times' Paul Krugman observed. Also, Republican lawmakers enacted voter ID laws which established new hurdles for voters to jump.
Former staffers in the Justice Department's civil rights division said they were "repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia's voter ID law to Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters," Krugman added.
The administration's effort to prosecute voter fraud is a sham. The New York Times reports that voter experts have found "widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud." However, the Election Assistance Commission, a federal panel charged with election research, skewed the findings of the voter experts.

Now I'm not adding anything to that. How come? If you don't know, Rebecca's been covering this for weeks now. When we all went to Texas, she rode (in Treva's RV) and didn't take a plane because she's still nervous about the pregnancy (or was up to that point) and so she ended up diving into this and pretty much covers it every night. She's going to highlight this tonight and discuss it and other Gonzales stuff so check out Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Thursday, April 12, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, war resisters continue standing even when little jerks attack, the puppet pushes the privatization of Iraq's oil, and Kurt Vonnegut is dead.


Starting with war resisters, it must have been a full moon. You had the overgrown "girl" going after war resisters and then you got Little Priss (at the most laughable student newspaper of any college in the US) doing the same. It takes a special kind of voice to 'sing' so passionately about the tough life when Daddy's a big league coach but we're not supposed to talk about that, I'm guessing. Just like we're all supposed to pretend Junior's slug line is in anyway authentic (Little Boys from Suburbia have nasty cases of Big City Envy that force them to lie -- something that was frowned upon in the private, religious school they attended to avoid mixing with other races). Maybe Little Priss can join the overgrown "girl" and assist her in basket-weaving her home-made maxi-pads. What has them up in arms? A nasty case of toxic shock syndrome?

No, a hatred of war resisters such as Camilo Mejia whose new book, Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, will be published by The New Press next month (May 1st). Kirkus Reviews found it, "Timely, courageous and cautionary." Mejia, as noted in Amy Goodman and David Goodman's Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back, served six months in Iraq and, after returning to the US, applied for c.o. status and self-checked out of the military. Mejia was convicted of desertion and sentenced to a year at Fort Still. Upon release, Mejia declared, "Peace does not come easily, so I tell all members of the military that whenever faced with an order, and everything in their mind and soul, and each and every cell in their bodies scream at them to refuse and resist, then by God do so. Jail will mean nothing when brekaing the law became their duty to humanity." Another quote Camilo Mejia is known for, noted by Eric Ruder (Socialist Worker), is "Behind these bars, I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience."

Mejia's book follows Joshua Key's successful The Deserter's Tale and joins other books exploring the resistance in the military today including Peter Laufer's Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. Mejia is also featured in the documentary To Disobey.
As Monica Benderman, wife of Iraq war resister Kevin Benderman, has noted, there has been little on resistance in many bookstores. Monica and Kevin Benderman intend to do their part to change that by writing their own book.

Mejia and Benderman are a part of a movement resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada, Dean Walcott, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.


In Iraq today the violence continued. So badly that US Secretary of State Condi Rice felt the need to issue a laughable statement: "We know that there is a security problem in Baghdad." "We know"? Speaking for the rest of the world, "we hope so." We hope you know there is a problem in Baghdad. Still, it is an improvement over her usual "no one could have guessed" statements.

The most shocking incident of violence today for the US administration may have been the bombing inside the Green Zone. NPR's Tom Bullock notes that the explosion took place "inside the Iraqi parliament building" in the heavily fortified section of Baghdad known as the Green Zone and that it was "a major security breach." BBC offers that the cafeteria where the bombing took place "is for MPs and their staff, some of whom were having lunch there."
AFP, noting that the Green Zone is "the country's most heavily guarded site," observes that the bombing took place "despite a massive US-Iraqi security crackdown". Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) notes that the bombing was caputed by "news video camera" revealing "the blast: a flash and an orange ball of fire causing a startled parliament member who was being interviewed to duck, and then the smoky, dust-filled aftermath of confusion and shouting." The news team was from Al-Hurrah, the US based and US tax funded propoganda outlet. Abdul-Zahra also notes that two legs, apparently belonging to the person who detonated the bomb, can be seen on the videotape. There is dispute as to whether a person carried the bomb in and it exploded on his/her person or whether the bomb was planted somewhere in the cafeteria. Dean Yates and Ross Colvin (Reuters) sketch out the basic procedures of entry: "the confrence centre is restricted to accredited parliamentary staff, deputies, security guards and journalists. Only MPs, police and kitchen staff can access the cafeteria. Two Shi'ite lawmakers said the metal detector used at the VIP entrance was working, but a Sunni legislator said when he arrived there was a power cut and bags were being manually searched. A Reuters cameraman said the scanner at a second entrance used by staff and journalists was operating." Those steps are to access the cafeteria. AFP notes gaining entry to the Green Zone "is restricted to visitors carrying picture identity cards and required to pass through multiple checkpoints and metal detectors."

James Hider (Times of London) explains the bombing, in "practical terms," means "the incident also whosed that the bombers can get straight into the heart of what was meant to be the most protected place in Baghdad. Therefore, in effect, it serves to send out the message that nobody is safe and that the insurgents can get suicide bombers in anywhere. The reality is that, despite its reputation as a heavily fortified and protected area, the Green Zone isn't actually that impenetrable. Within the zone itself live 15,000 Iraqis who go in and out every day." CNN states that 14 MPs were wounded (reported number is currently as high as 20). AP notes three members of parliament dead -- Taha al-Liheibi (Sunni), Mohammed Awad (Sunni) and Niamah al-Mayahi (Shi'ite) -- and that they are part of the total eight reported dead. Martin Seemungal (CBS News) spoke with a parlimentarian in the cafeteria who stated that 6 MPs may have been killed in the bombing.

The Green Zone is where Iraq's puppet government offices are, where the stadium-size US embassy is, where many journalists are. As a result, that bombing has cast a lengthy shadow over an earlier one today. BBC reports that a truck bomb took out the Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad during rush hour traffic and that it "sent several cars toppling into the River Tigris below." CBS and AP report: "Cement pilings that support the bridge's stell structure were left crumbling. At the base of one laid a charred vehicle enigne, believed to be that of the truck bomb." CNN notes 10 dead, 26 wounded and that "two large sections in the middle of al-Sarafiya bridge collapsed into the river." AFP reports that "River police raced to the scene on patrol boats and divers donned oxygen cylinders to search the murky waters for survivors after officials said four cars tumbled off the bridge." Reuters reminds that, "The Tigris River cuts Baghdad in half and the Sarafiya bridge is a key artery in the northern part of the city."

James Hider (Times of London) offers his opinion of the message sent with the bridge bombing, "the attack on the al-Sarafiya bridge is also believed to be extremely symoblic. The east of Baghdad is mainly Shia while the west is mainly Sunni, and the Parliamentary speaker today said that the insurgents are conspiring to divide Baghdad in two. The particular bombing -- destorying one of the main access points uniting the city -- illustrates this well. . . . There are, of course, other ways to get across the city apart from this particular bridge. But the fewer there are, the greater the chance of those who use them getting caught up in the bombing." BBC News' Jim Muir observes that both "attacks are major blows to the much-trumpeted security surge now in its third month".

The puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, is in Seol and, from miles away, issued a statement on the bombings. It was apparently more important that he be present in South Korea for the big push that Iraq will raise producting of oil to 3 million barrels per day. In doing so, he was also selling the privatization of Iraq's oil (something the US Congress is on board with). Reuters notes: "The world's top oil comapnies have been maneuvering for years to win a stake in Iraq's prized oilfields such as Bin Umar, Majnoon, Nassiriyah, West Qurna and Ratawi, all located in the south of the country." In Baghdad, however, it was all smilles as Hoshyar Zebari (Iraq's Minister of Foreign Affairs) met with Hassan Kazimi Qumi (Iran's ambassador to Iraq) where they discussed the upcoming meeting in Egypt and Iraq's help in obtaining the release of one Iranian diplomat. Strangely, considering Little Willie's big press conference yesterday, bombings and weapons weren't a topic of the meeting.

As Norman Solomon (CounterPunch) observes, the US government has their eyes on Iran and US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are 100% all options for war (all repeating the "no option" off the table mantra). Despite this, Solomon notes, WalkOn.org is pushing the myth that "Hillary Clinton has provided some much needed leadership on" the issue of war with Iran -- apparently Hillary cried, "To the barricades!" Solomon concludes: "To praise Hillary Clinton for providing 'much needed leadership' on Iran -- and to mislead millions of e-mail recipients counted as MoveOn members in the process -- is a notable choice to make. It speaks volumes. It winks at Clinton's stance that 'no option can be taken off the table.' It serves an enabling function. It is very dangerous. The stakes are much too high to make excuses or look the other way."

Meanwhile, in the ruins of Iraq, another anniversary passed yesterday but it wasn't as crowd pleasing as the staged take-down of a Saddam statue. Haydar Baderqghan (Azzaman) reminds that it is four years of "the looting of Iraq Museum," that the Ministry of Archaeology and Terrorism issued a statement condeming "the barbarism of wars and their destructive outcome," and that only 4,000 of the 15,000 stolen artifacts have been recovered (four years later).

In other violence today . . .

Bombings?

Reuters reports 2 roadside bombing in Kirkuk killed 6 and injured 21, a Baghdad mortar attack that left one person dead and one wounded.

Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) notes a Baquba bombing that killed 4 police officers and injured two more and another Baquba bombing that wounded two people;

Shootings?

Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) reports one person shot dead in south Baghdad and another shot and injured and one person shot dead in east Baghdad. Reuters reports a police officer "guarding civil servants on a bush" in Mosul was shot dead.

Corpses?

Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) offers a breakdown of the areas of Baghdad that 12 corpses were discovered in today.

Finally, in the United States, a passing deserves noting, from Democracy Now!:


And finally, the author Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was eighty-four years old. Vonnegut authored at least nineteen novels including "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle." In recent years, Vonnegut was a fierce critic of the Bush administration and a columnist for the magazine In These Times.

Transcript, audio and video of Vonnegut can be found here at Democracy Now!
















Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)